Shared Word Translation
Job 30
Now They Laugh at Me
“But now they laugh at me,
men younger than I,
whose fathers I would have refused
to put with the dogs of my flock.
What use was the strength of their hands to me,
when their vigor had perished?
Through want and hunger they were gaunt,
gnawing the dry ground
in darkness and desolation.
They plucked salt herbs among the bushes,
and the roots of broom trees were their food.
They were driven out from the community;
people shouted after them as after a thief.
They had to live in dreadful ravines,
in holes of the earth and rocks.
Among the bushes they brayed;
under nettles they huddled together.
Children of fools, even children without a name,
they were whipped out of the land.
I Have Become Their Song
And now I have become their song;
I have become a byword to them.
They abhor me and keep far from me;
they do not hesitate to spit in my face.
Because God has loosened my bowstring and humbled me,
they cast off restraint before me.
At my right hand a brood rises;
they push away my feet
and build their roads of destruction against me.
They tear up my path;
they profit from my calamity,
with no one to restrain them.
As through a wide breach they come;
amid the ruin they roll upon me.
Terrors are turned upon me;
they pursue my dignity like the wind,
and my salvation passes away like a cloud.
My Soul Is Poured Out Within Me
And now my soul is poured out within me;
days of affliction seize me.
At night my bones are pierced within me,
and my gnawing pains do not rest.
With great force my garment is disfigured;
it binds me like the collar of my tunic.
He has thrown me into the mire,
and I have become like dust and ashes.
I cry to you, but you do not answer me;
I stand, and you merely look at me.
You have turned cruel toward me;
with the might of your hand you persecute me.
You lift me to the wind; you make me ride upon it,
and you dissolve me in the storm.
For I know that you will bring me to death,
to the house appointed for all living.
When I Hoped for Good, Evil Came
Yet does not one stretch out a hand from a ruin?
In disaster, does one not cry out for help?
Did I not weep for the one whose day was hard?
Was not my soul grieved for the poor?
But when I hoped for good, evil came;
when I waited for light, darkness came.
My inward parts churn and do not rest;
days of affliction confront me.
I walk darkened, but not by the sun;
I rise in the assembly and cry for help.
I have become a brother to jackals
and a companion to ostriches.
My skin turns black upon me,
and my bones burn from heat.
My lyre has become mourning,
and my pipe the voice of those who weep.”